We’re over the hump, more than halfway through this… thing. I have to stay focused and soldier on, only concern myself with the BDSM bits, not that there have been many in the last couple of chapters. We’ve moved into what amounts to your basic “shopping and fucking” novel.

After the Gothic psychodrama of Ana and Christian’s tortured couplings, and murderous plots by Christian’s former employees, it’s hard to care that Elliot may be cheating on Kate even as he proposes marriage to her. (Another symptom of a post-shark-jump TV series: random and gratuitous proposals and weddings.)

This feels like one of those post-shark-jump episodes of a TV series, when the whole cast heads off to Hawaii or a dude ranch or something because the writers have run out of ideas. Jack Hyde is in jail so there’s no external threat, and Ana and Christian are married, so there’s no big event to build up to. We still have more than a third of this last book to go and there’s nothing to generate tension except waiting for Christian to blow up again.

More pillow talk in the playroom. (Ana seems to have recovered quickly.) Christian still seems to expect Ana to obey him and not defy him, even though Ana’s moments of independence are rather childish and largely symbolic. E.g. going out for drinks with Kate.

This is, I think, the second time a BDSM scene between these two people in this room has ended with her in tears. Add to that the possible rape back in book 1, which also ended with her in tears. I bet if you tabulated all the BDSM scenes, or sex scenes, and calculated how many left Ana crying, it would be an unacceptable average.

I didn’t sign on for this. I thought I would be reading what amounted to a romantic comedy with kink. Instead I’ve been drawn into something more like a Gothic psychodrama about a weak-willed, not terribly bright woman who married a psychopathic billionaire, with a sprinkling of BDSM scenes here and there.

Well, nobody put me up to this, so I can’t really complain, and it is too late to quit now anyway. Onward.

We’re back with the Goon Squad having captured Jack Hyde, who’s proved to be a most unimpressive villain.

This is one of those moments when I feel sorry for whoever has to adapt these books into movie scripts, because it’s going to look weird if the big villain is so easily dispatched by secondary characters, and it will throw the plot of the entire movie off. You can tell that EL James wrote this serially without plotting ahead, or trying to make it conform to a novel or film three-act structure. If there is a film adaptation, it will either be altered so much that fans will hate it, or it will be faithful and alternate between nonsense and reactionary gender politics.

I want to get through the Fifty Shades trilogy by the end of the year so I can start 2013 without this particular kidney stone in my system. Given that I hate this book more and more with each page, that could be difficult. Part of the problem is that, as the story unfolds, there’s actually less and less BDSM, and more and more of Ana and Christian’s hideously dysfunctional marriage. That’s not what I signed up for. I was under the impression that this was a book about BDSM, and assumed that it would basically be a standard-issue romance with some extra kink in the sex scenes; at worse, silly, harmless fluff. Instead, only a minority of the sex scenes involve any kink at all (I should total up the number) and the great love story of 2012 is the most abusive nightmare I’ve ever read. I’m more angered and baffled now than when I started this project.

Okay, where were we? The Expander takes an afternoon out of running his empire to force his wife to take his name by threatening to rape her. Mrs. Expander is a drunk paranoid slut-shamer, learning to exercise her right as a member of the one-percent (by marriage) to verbally abuse underlings. Everybody up to speed?

Just when I think this book has hit the nadir, that I can’t hate these characters any more, E.L. James exceeds my expectations.

Probably drunk at this point (and it’s early evening), Ana tarts herself up for a meeting with the architect of their new home, Gia Matteo. Ana is convinced that Gia is after Christian, based on the facts that Gia touches Christian’s shoulder once and licks her upper lip before drinking wine. (She’s blond, so she’s obviously a minion of Satan.) Rather than deal with Christian’s abusive ways, Ana doubles-down on her jealousy of every heterosexual woman on Earth who isn’t related to Christian.

Ana’s identification of Jack Hyde from the security camera footage is confirmed by state of the art facial recognition software.

Barney, Christian’s surveillance guy, says:

“Sure will. I’m also going to scan the city CCTV and see if I can track his movements.”
“Check what vehicle he owns.”
“Sir.”
“Barney can do all this?” I whisper.
Christian nods and gives me a smug smile.

Think about that. Remember when back in book 1, Christian traced Ana’s cell phone? Now he has access to an entire city’s CCTV network. That’s a frightening amount of power for a private citizen to have, not to mention hideously illegal. We’ve already seen that Christian’s security apparatus takes orders from him, not Ana, and they are willing to restrict her movements. All of this is adding up to a frightening portrait of the power at Christian’s disposal, and just how deeply Ana is embedded in it.

Granted, when there has been violence directed at you, you probably would want this kind of security. But it’s still disturbing to consider how little it would take for Christian to turn on Ana, and how much of a hell he could make her life if he wanted.